I own a 22,000 gallon gunite pool with 24" raised spa. I currently run a pentair 1.5 hp challenger I want to switch to an intelliflo for the efficiency. Do i understand it right that if the vf is hooked up to an intellitouch the outdoor display will not display anything. Is it worth it then? Dont you get more setting than the standard 4 with the vs if it is hooked up to an intellitouch? Pentairs info on htis sublect is very confusing any profession input would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intelliflo vs or vf used in conjunction with intellitouch
- Thread starter Jasson
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I have the IntelliFlo VF with the IntelliTouch and you are correct that the display on the pump is not active when the IntelliTouch is controlling the pump (if you put the IntelliTouch into service mode, then you can use the display and controls on the pump directly). So in my setup, I have one wired remote in the house and that works out fine since it's really a "program it, set it and forget it" sort of thing. If I want to do anything while at the pump, I put the system into Service Mode and then work with the pump directly.
The pump has cut my incremental pump electric bill in half from around $1500 to $800 a year. I replaced a 1 HP main pump and a 3/4 HP booster pump, the latter being used for my pressure-side pool sweep. I know have a valve to switch to the dedicated line for the pool sweep at 15 GPM and changed the pool sweep from a Letro Legend to The Pool Cleaner. The only reason my pump costs are still high is that I have solar which is on usually 6 hours a day at 48 GPM and 1500 Watts; otherwise the system runs at 26 GPM and 275 Watts.
I believe you are correct that with the IntelliTouch you get more than 4 settings for your pump. Basically the IntelliTouch takes over programming the pump so you can have many different custom speeds. The only advantage to the VF v. the VS is that the VF will automatically adjust to give you the desired flow rate. Of course, if you get a flow meter you can probably do nearly as well with the VS unless you want the pump to automatically adjust to keep the flow rate higher as the filter gets clogged and the pressure (head) rises. Note that the advertising of the VF being able to keep track of cumulative water volume to shut off early during filtering is not true -- they removed that feature.
Richard
The pump has cut my incremental pump electric bill in half from around $1500 to $800 a year. I replaced a 1 HP main pump and a 3/4 HP booster pump, the latter being used for my pressure-side pool sweep. I know have a valve to switch to the dedicated line for the pool sweep at 15 GPM and changed the pool sweep from a Letro Legend to The Pool Cleaner. The only reason my pump costs are still high is that I have solar which is on usually 6 hours a day at 48 GPM and 1500 Watts; otherwise the system runs at 26 GPM and 275 Watts.
I believe you are correct that with the IntelliTouch you get more than 4 settings for your pump. Basically the IntelliTouch takes over programming the pump so you can have many different custom speeds. The only advantage to the VF v. the VS is that the VF will automatically adjust to give you the desired flow rate. Of course, if you get a flow meter you can probably do nearly as well with the VS unless you want the pump to automatically adjust to keep the flow rate higher as the filter gets clogged and the pressure (head) rises. Note that the advertising of the VF being able to keep track of cumulative water volume to shut off early during filtering is not true -- they removed that feature.
Richard
thanks chem geek but that still leaves one question if you did it again would you still spend the extra $350 for the vs or would you just do your own calculations. I do not have solar i have a cart. filter and 400,000 btu heater. I also have a 3/4 hp booster for a P.O.S. hayward phantom. I can eliminate the booster with the intelliflo? any idea where i can get a schematic for that? looking to buy tomm. and am still very confused on exactly what the differences are between the two pumps when using the intellitouch for control? thanks again
The increment in price for the VF vs. the VS was small compared to the entire installation (labor in our area is expensive and the IntelliTouch isn't cheap either). If I was concerned with cost, then I would have gone with the VS, but would have also purchased a flow meter and installed it in the pipe since I really did want to optimize the solar efficiency while keeping electricity costs down and that "sweet spot" is somewhat narrow as the solar panels drop off in efficiency below 4 GPM per panel pretty quickly, but flatten out above 4 GPM. So I'm happy with what I've got, but the VF in my situation really isn't necessary and a VS plus flow meter would have worked just as well.
thanks i think i will go with the vf as well. you know better to have and not need than .........
chem geek,
Please expand on this. Are you referring to the pump under control of an IntelliTouch?
"Note that the advertising of the VF being able to keep track of cumulative water volume to shut off early during filtering is not true -- they removed that feature."
A stand alone VF calculates volume and always has. If you run more than one rate in that period of time, it shuts off early and indicates POWER SAVE.
Under control of an IT, the IT does not get the smarts from the pump so if you run a solar program for example, it will run all day regardless of daily turnover settings.
Please expand on this. Are you referring to the pump under control of an IntelliTouch?
"Note that the advertising of the VF being able to keep track of cumulative water volume to shut off early during filtering is not true -- they removed that feature."
A stand alone VF calculates volume and always has. If you run more than one rate in that period of time, it shuts off early and indicates POWER SAVE.
Under control of an IT, the IT does not get the smarts from the pump so if you run a solar program for example, it will run all day regardless of daily turnover settings.
Yes, the pump was under the control of the IntelliTouch. So what you are saying is that if the solar is on and running at a higher flow rate, the IntelliTouch doesn't keep track of this the way the pump would so doesn't shut off early when the solar goes off if one turnover has already been achieved (assuming that's what was programmed for filtering mode). Well, I wish the service tech that came to my house knew that as well as Pentair service that both he an I called into. Not that it would have mattered in my situation, but it would have made more sense than what they said which is that they used to have this, got too many complaints from people who wanted to have guaranteed longer filter times, so removed the feature. It still seems pretty dumb to have the pump be smart enough to keep track of the cumulative flow while the IntelliTouch which displays the flow information and has its own clock cannot keep track of it!repair_guy said:chem geek,
Please expand on this. Are you referring to the pump under control of an IntelliTouch?
"Note that the advertising of the VF being able to keep track of cumulative water volume to shut off early during filtering is not true -- they removed that feature."
A stand alone VF calculates volume and always has. If you run more than one rate in that period of time, it shuts off early and indicates POWER SAVE.
Under control of an IT, the IT does not get the smarts from the pump so if you run a solar program for example, it will run all day regardless of daily turnover settings.
There were other problems such as not knowing that I could not ensure turning off certain features when I wanted the pool sweep to run. Otherwise the highest GPM of any special feature is what gets used -- there is no priority for them. So Pentair ended up giving me an i9s upgrade for free from my i5s so that I could get macros to force the kind of programming I needed -- namely, to turn off any other special features (such as gas heater) to ensure that the flow rate isn't exceeded when switching to my pool sweep. Even so, I need to run it at night to ensure that the solar doesn't kick in since there is no way to dynamically turn that off since it's based only on temperature and not on time (and the pool sweep requires the "Pool" function to run which could turn on the solar during the day).
There are still some quirks such as the "manual priority op" not working consistently -- even when set to "No" it still will force a manual on or off setting to stay stuck when an automatic program is supposed to override it. Little things, but overall I've very happy with the situation.
Richard
tmoss
0
I know my VF with intellitouch does in fact shut off early if higher flowrates were run during normal filter run times. And the local display at the pump does indicate power save. However, in order for this function to work I believe you have to use feature 3-9.
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